Character Gauntlet Feb 2015

Day 1 - First Impressions

[WC: 1,130]

Nothing sadder than a broke-down theme park. But a job is a job is a job. She wills herself past the rickety “haunted” house, with its peeling paint and crumbling siding, past the Thrill Ride of Death ^TM and the bored skater boy manning it, towards the administration trailer parked by the wire fence. Off-white fading to dingy gray, it looks like a future crime scene. The vicious rape and murder, and later, are you paying too much for groceries on the ten o’clock news kind.

She knocks tentatively, not so secretly hoping no one answers.

What she needs is a break. For this to be a legitimate job opportunity, not a scam. To get hired, and not have anything happen to fuck that up. No percentage in the coulda woulda shouldas.

She and luck, however, are not particularly familiar. No more than a nodding acquaintance since her mother was so high out of her mind eighteen years ago that she didn’t realize she was pregnant until seven months in. Too late for an abortion and then there she was. Premature but miraculously healthy. Point of fact, that might have been her first and last lucky break.

“Come in if you’re coming in, asshole. Otherwise, get the hell away from my door.” Jicama realizes that Carl, or whoever it is inside the trailer, has been telling her to come in for a hot minute. Making a real great first impression there. She opens the door, not sure if she wants to go in. And isn’t that the story of? “You’re an ethnic. Wetback or black?”

The asshole already had her name. Jicama A. Fernandez in 14 pt. type right on the left-hand corner of her resume, the same one she can see sitting on top of the mess masquerading as a desk. Only a dumbfuck would think I’d be white. But maybe he wanted a light-skinned Venezuelan bombshell instead of a Caribbean mutt.

“Better be legal, at any rate. I’m not trying to get shut down.” She steps all the way into the trailer, tugging the door closed behind her.

He gives her start she’s not stupid enough to show. She knows better than most men like that get off on scaring teenage girls. But fuck. Dude’s four hundred pounds at the minimum, layer upon layer of flab straining his stained wife-beater, a few days out from his last bath. Prematurely balding, squinty pig eyes, a mouth-breather. The quintessential ugly American, el Boogie incarnate. She’s not sure how he wedged himself into the chair behind the desk, or through the narrow door of the trailer for that matter.

Instead of reacting to his commentary, she makes a big show of looking around the dingy interior. One, because it’s guaranteed to piss him off, and two, because a body always needs to know where the exits are. In this case, only way out is the way she came in. Stupid of her to have closed the door all the way. Nothing doing though. Unless he was faster than he looked, by the time he extricated himself from the chair she’d be nothing but air.

“What, you don’t speak English? You get your cousin to interview over the phone?”

“I’m American, Carl. 100 percent apple pie.” Too much sass for an interview. Tone that shit down, unless you want to go crawling back to that old pervert. “I brought my passport and Social Security with me.”

“What kind of name is Jicama then? Your parents hippies?”

The none of your business kind. But, right, no more of that. That’s what got her fired from Mocha City. “Is the position still available?” she asked in a tone that sideways might pass for sweet.

“Sure you want it? College kid and all. Resume says you’re too smart for this shit.” He smiles at her meanly, eyes squintier by the minute. Sore spot there. If he graduated high school she’d eat his shirt. “Unless you ain’t legal.”

The temptation to turn around and walk away, running far and fast from this shitty town and her shittier life, chewed her insides bloody. Yet it was this or stripping. No fucks given on principle, since she’d actually be doing it to pay for college, stripping being legal money and all, but Jicama was realistic. Too short, too dark, itty-bitty titties and no ass to speak of. She wasn’t hot enough to make her money stripping unless she also moonlit hooking. And that shit was emphatically Not For Her.

“I’m interested in the position, and as legal as you are.” More legal, probably, given that his grandparents were likely stowaways.

The anger’s always there. She tries to keep it clamped down, though it bubbles up on the regular despite her best attempts. Loosing it is what got her fired, so you would think she’d have learned better.

“Over-qualified, less this is somebody else’s resume.”

“Yes sir.”

The first tuition payment is due at the end of January. Mocha City would have paid for it, and books besides. Five shifts a week at a clean twelve an hour plus tips, overtime and night differential. Some other broke college kid is working there. Right now, she’s here, unemployed.

Therefore, she concentrates on looking pleasant. Non-threatening. Hard to do when you look small and mean even at rest. A smile with too many teeth in it, more a silent growl than anything else. Her poker face is not blank enough, she can tell, because Carl is turning nasty pale.

“I can start immediately.” It can't hurt to try respectful. She is in a fix of her own making, no six ways about it. More pride than common sense. But not for anything in the world, not even her education, was she going to let a man stick his hands in her drawers without asking.

“You’re not gonna be giving me any trouble, are you? No fucking loser wetback gangbangers hanging around my place, bringing the tone down?”

No sir was the right answer, and double true besides, it not being her policy to waste time with losers except when she had to, like at work, like with fat fuck Carl and his petty power trip. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. So she kept her mouth shut and stared him down. There was nothing she could say or do that would get her this job, and a shit ton she could do to lose it.

“It’s ten an hour, Thursday through Sunday, clean up Mondays. We don’t work Tuesdays or Wednesdays unless someone rents us out. Don’t make me regret this.” He stuck a sweaty palm out for her to shake. Relief crashed through her in waves. Thank you god, thank you. I promise I won’t fuck this up.